All done!

How nice it is to see the Singer 422G properly clean, without those brown stains all over.

Looking great now.

A sharp eye will notice one tiny piece still missing. A piece of a blue Q-tip sits where a screw and a thread guide should be over the needle clamp. I found that this screw serves a more important purpose than just holding the thread guide in place. It is also there to help position the needle properly. A replacement part is on its way from eBay.

One of the final repairs I did was to remove old pieces of thread from the mechanism behind the face plate. Of course, it was stuck in the innermost, least accessible joint. Using tweezers and patience, I managed to unwrap and remove all of the thread. I’m glad I didn’t have to take the mechanism apart.

Nice stitches, to prove the machine is not only clean, but also working great. Oiled, greased, adjusted. Ready for anything. What shall I sew now?

Cleaning the underside

I was tempted to leave the underside alone. After the cleaning, oiling and adjusting I’d done, the 422G sewed very nicely already.

But for completeness’ sake, I went ahead and opened up the underside. I’m glad I did.

So much fluff on these gears.

This hasn’t been cleaned out in a while…

Found inside the lower cover: A small bracket with screw, one pin, and parts of broken needles.

The bracket might belong under the slide plate. It fits there, in the front right corner. Its function may be to prevent the slide plate from sliding all the way out, or to provide support for the needle plate.

Now it’s all cleaned, gears greased and oiling points oiled. One happy sewing machine got even happier.

New bobbin winder tire

No wonder it was hard to wind thread on bobbins. Look at that tire! It is covered in dirt, and hard. If I didn’t know it was made of rubber, I’d never guess.

Badly worn and dirty bobbin winder. (Hand wheel removed.)

A properly wound bobbin is essential to good sewing. Replacement tires are cheap and easy to find on eBay or online sewing shops.

The new tire (black) is soft like rubber should be. The old one has gone hard.

The old tire broke in two when I forced it off. Fitting the new one was easy.

Fixed the zags

The more I cleaned and oiled, the nicer the machine sewed. But one problem remained: The zig zag stitches were very irregular. It skipped left stitches all the time.

Before: Many zigs, few zags.

The service manual helped me do two important adjustments. First, I checked the clearances between the bobbin case and the spring which holds it in place. It turned out that the spring was set a little too far away from the bobbin case.

Loosen these two screws to adjust the clearances around the spring.

The next adjustment was the height of the presser foot. According to the service manual, this should be 7.5 mm when raised. It was barely 5 mm.

After: I don’t know which of these two adjustments did the trick, but now the machine zig zags quite beautifully!

New feet

I treated the Singer to new feet today. The old ones were so cracked and worn that the machine rested on the screws instead of the rubber.

One mistake: I should have ordered five feet, not four. There’s one under the detachable table that I forgot. Maybe next time. Or I’ll hack  a new foot with Sugru.

The old feet were so cracked and worn that the machine rested on the screws, instead of the rubber.

Four old and one new, shiny, black foot.